How to install Android VM Image on Virtualbox or Vmware

Android, the most popular operating system, now not only just limited to your smartphones. If you have the curiosity to use it on your personal computer (PC) then you can do it. Now, the users those have a spare machine to test the Android operating system on PC can use the Android ISO image. You just need to make a bootable USB drive using the downloaded ISO images of Android 7.0, 8.0, 9.0 or whatever the version you want. However, if you don’t have the extra system to test the Android then another option which available is Virtualization. The most popular Virtualization software are VirtualBox and Vmware. The VirtualBox is an open source tool and available for Linux, Windows, and Mac. While the other one Vmware is also available for the OS mentioned but it is proprietary software.

You can either use the Android ISO image to install the Android OS on VirtualBox / VMware or simply download the pre-configured Android x86 Virtual machine image (VM). The benefit of using Virtual Image is, you don’t need to configure storage, Ram, other hardware configuration for the OS on Virtualization software. Just download the Android VM image and it simply boots as a preinstalled machine. It saves a lot of time.

Prerequisites

To install and experience the Android on PC you nee two things VirtualBox or Vmware software and Android x86 ISO image or Android x86 VM image. Here in this tutorial, we are going to use the VirtualBox and to save time and make it easy to install the Android on PC, the Android x86 VM image.

Here are the Links to download the above-mentioned prerequisites software.

Step by step tutorial to install Android OS on Virtual Box using the VM images

Note: It doesn’t matter which operating system you are using it could be Linux, Windows or Mac because the process of working with Virtual or Vmware is the same for all of them.

Step 1: First of all, download and install the VirtualBox on your PC machine ( Linux, Windows or Mac).

Step 2: After the installation of the Virtualbox, you need to download the Android X86 VM image from the link given above given in this article. On the website, you will find two images one is for VirtualBox and other is meant for Vmware. According to your software select that. As we are using the VirtualBox, so we downloaded the VirtualBox image.

Step 3: While writing this the article the latest Android VM image available on the website was Android-x86 8.1-RC1 Oreo.

Step 4: The downloaded the Android X86 VM image file will be in 7z archive format. After downloading you need to extract the Android VM image from using the normal Winrar or 7zip or any other archive/ compression software.

Step 5: Run the VirtualBox.

Step 6: Click on the NEW button from the VirtualBox menu.

Step 7: Give some name to your Android virtual machine, like we have given Android test H2s.

Step 8: From Type drop-down select the Other and Version = other/unknown.

Step 9: Select the size of memory you want to provide your operating system. We have assigned 2GB for fluid functions.

About The Author

Rajkumar Maurya is the H2S Media tech expert. He’s always been passionate about technology and has been writing on the subject since 2014. He has extensive knowledge of all kinds of technology, from consumer-tech to enterprise solutions. Follow him on:Twitter | Instagram
You can contact the author at-- raj@how2shout.com